Slide Show Properties- Show

The Slide Show Properties Show Sheet  controls the movie size, background, compression (file size and image quality), matting and framing, frame rate, Web page creation and looping.  The illustration below shows the Slide Show Properties Show Sheet.

Setting the Size of a Slide Show Display

The Movie Size Area contains the controls for setting the viewable size of  images in a slide show.  The sizes chosen are without any matting or borders.

The Movie Size Drop-Down Box provides six preset values and a Custom selection for determining image size.  The preset sizes are as follows:

• Large Square 10"x10" or 720x720 pixels

• Medium Square 5"x5" or 360x360 pixels

• Small Square 3"x3" or 216x216 pixels

• Large Portrait 8"x10" or 576x720 pixels

• Medium Portrait 3"x5" or 216x360 pixels

• Small Portrait 2"x3" or "144x216 pixels

• Large Full Screen

• Medium Full Screen

• Small Full Screen

The preset values are in inches.  It is a standard to assume that the screen resolutions will be 72 pixels to an inch. So a 5 x 5 preset size gives you an image of 360 x360 pixels.  The Width and Height boxes show the slide size in either pixels or inches depending on the setting of the Inches and Pixels (dimensions) buttons next to them.

The Full Screen Modes force the show into an aspect ratio (4:3) that will let most images fill the entire screen.  The sizes refer to the file sizes created.  For projection systems and large monitors the Large Full Screen will provide the highest resolution imagery. 

If Custom is selected then the desired size is typed directly into the Width and Height boxes.  The values entered should be consistent with the setting of the Inches/Pixel buttons.

Setting the Slide Background

The Background Drop-Down Menu  provides the selection of the slide shows background.  All slides and the title page will show the same background.

Solid, textured and Custom backgrounds are supported

Selecting a custom color brings up a standard Window's  color picker.  The custom color will be applied to either the solid or texture background as selected. 

Transparent Background

Selecting Transparent creates an invisible background to other flash applications.  Use this selection if you want to incorporate your movie with other objects within a third party Flash application.

 

Custom Matte provides for the importation of any image in a supported format for use as a background.  If the image is smaller than the chosen slide show size it is treated as wallpaper and replicated.

Slide Quality and File Size

The Compression Drop-Down Menu selects the quality setting or the degree of compression applied to the images in creating the slideshow.  The trade off is high quality vs. large file size.  Five preset values are provided.

Based on a test show of 11 images at 5"x5" (360x360) with no sound and a length of 40 seconds the following is the effect of quality on file size:

• Worst - 108Kb

• Low -  132 Kb

• Medium - 164 Kb

• High - 256 Kb

• Maximum - 612 Kb

As can be seen higher quality settings consume substantially more file size.

Frame Rate

Frame Rate is the number of images a second that are created to add animation to the slide show.  30 frames a second is the standard for SWF (Flash) used in the slides show.  It is recommended that this value be kept at 30.  Setting the value to a smaller number will degrade the smoothness of the transitions.

To change the Frame Rate simply add the desired value in the Frame Rate Box

Continuous Looping

Selecting the Loop Show Box will cause a slide show to repeat continuously  Leave the box unchecked will result in a single play of the slide show.

Creating a Web Page. 

Selecting the Create associated Web Page. box cause an HTML (Web page) to be created automatically every time a slide show is published.  The Web page will display the slideshow one line from the top of page and centered.  The HTML page may then be republished or copied to a website along with the slide show (swf) file.  The name of the published Web page for a slide showed named MyShow  will by MyShow.htm.  The slide show file will be named MySHow.swf.

The HTML page will assume that the SWF file is in the same directory as it is.

Copy the .htm and .swf files created to a directory on a website, disk drive or CD ROM and and the Slideshow is ready to view .

Enter the path to the html page in an browser navigation window and you will view the slideshow playing in the web page.

Creating a Show Template

Clicking on the Apply to new shows box will save all the values for Slide Show Properties and apply them to subsequent shows.  Load any existing show that you may like the look of.  Click on this box and then begin a new show.  The new show will have all the properties of the "template" show you already created.